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Silicon Valley job growth has reached dot-com boom levels, report says – Alameda Times

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 04:29:41 +0000

MOUNTAIN VIEW — Silicon Valley’s job growth has returned to dot-com boom levels and San Francisco has emerged as a major new tech hub. But good times have not returned for all area residents and ethnic groups.

Those are among the findings released Tuesday from the 2013 Silicon Valley Index, a closely watched annual study produced by San Jose-based Joint Venture Silicon Valley and the Mountain View-based Silicon Valley Community Foundation.

“Employment growth in Silicon Valley is impressive, very impressive,” said Russell Hancock, president of Joint Venture Silicon Valley. “Some might even say the job growth is cause for euphoria.”

Last year, the nine-county Bay Area added about 92,000 jobs, according

to the study. Of that total, Silicon Valley — defined as Santa Clara and San Mateo counties — accounted for 46 percent, or 42,000 jobs.

“This is prodigious job creation,” Hancock said. “The growth is crazy and it’s getting crazier.”

Both he and Stephen Levy, director of the Palo Alto-based Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy and an adviser for the report, said Santa Clara County now is above its job totals of the dot-com boom.

Recent Bay Area job growth goes well beyond social media, software, the Internet and other technology industries, showing that the recession is clearly over for the region.

“The tech phenomenon is rippling into other categories,” Hancock said. Construction is one of the

fastest-growing industries in the region, according to the report.

The study also found that San Francisco has emerged as a prominent contributor to what is known as Silicon Valley.

“For a long time we thought of San Francisco as an old-line town — banking, legal, retail, real estate,” Hancock said. “Now it’s tech, software, media, social networks, the Web.”

And that means the definition of Silicon Valley is expanding, the researchers said.

“We have two very dynamic entities, San Jose and San Francisco,” said Doug Henton, CEO of San Mateo-based Collaborative Economics, which did the primary research for the Silicon Valley Index. “They are very complementary to each other.”

During 2012, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties increased their combined job totals by 3.6 percent, while San Francisco grew its job totals by 3.7 percent.

Emmett Carson, CEO of Silicon Valley Community Foundation, said San Jose and San Francisco “are becoming the bookends with many tech companies in between.”

Despite the sturdy job gains, the report found that the upswing in employment and wages has not benefited Bay Area residents equitably.

“Income growth in Silicon Valley is uneven,” it said. “The gap between

high and low income earners is increasing.”

What’s more, certain ethnic groups appear to have been left behind by Silicon Valley’s current surge in hiring and rising wages.

Between 2009 and 2011, per capita income levels increased for whites, Asians and certain other groups. But blacks and Latinos suffered financial erosion. Income levels fell 18 percent among African-Americans and by 5 percent among Latinos, according to the report, but it offered no explanation for the declines.

“Silicon Valley is two valleys,” Hancock said. “There is a valley of haves, and a valley of have-nots.”

Contact George Avalos at 408-373-3556 or 925-977-8477. Follow him at Twitter.com/george_avalos.

The nine-county Bay Area gained about 92,000 jobs during 2012, and 42,000 of those were in Silicon Valley, defined as Santa Clara and San Mateo counties.

Average real per capita income (adjusted for inflation) in Silicon Valley in 2012 was $67,420, up 2.2 percent from 2011.

The fastest-growing employment sector in Silicon Valley was innovation and specialized services, with job growth of 8.7 percent for the year; this sector includes technical services, research and development, legal services and personnel.

Software jobs in Silicon Valley increased by 9.8 percent in 2012, while Internet and innovation services jobs were up 8.7 percent. Among nontech industries, construction was one of the leaders, with an 11 percent gain in jobs.

Source: Silicon Valley Index

Article source: http://www.insidebayarea.com/business/ci_22524360/silicon-valley-job-growth-prodigious-returned-dot-com-boom-levels?source=most_emailed

SF Tech Firms Want Retail, Real Estate To Bear Tax Burden

Wed, 02 May 2012 01:39:17 +0000

Technology firms are the economic engine of the Bay Area. But so are real estate and restaurants, which would be asked to pay more taxes under a plan pushed by technology companies and investors.

San Francisco’s tax plan is due to be overhauled, and one way to do it is to institute a gross receipts tax instead of a payroll tax. Tech firms and investors like Ron Conway, a Silicon Valley billionaire, like that plan because tech firms spend much more on payroll than they do on sales of products, according to the San Francisco Examiner.

Tech firms pushed a gross receipts tax “hard” during a meeting at City Hall with Mayor Ed Lee and Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, according to reports.

San Francisco-based companies currently pay a 1.5 percent tax on their payrolls, the newspaper reported. Twitter, however, convinced city leaders to write laws allowing for a special payroll tax exemption zone, and Zynga also convinced the city to write an exception on taxation of stock option compensation.

If the payroll tax is replaced with a gross receipts tax, retail, restaurants and real estate would pay almost double the tax currently paid, the newspaper reported. They’d pay 26 percent of the total tax revenue, compared to 16 percent now, the newspaper reported.

The payroll tax currently brings in $400 million a year, the newspaper reported.

“The tech companies don’t seem to be team players,” small-business advocate Scott Hauge told the newspaper.

Any final language on taxation issues will be fleshed out by June, when city leaders would have to make moves to place a change in the tax structure before voters in November.

Copyright NBC Owned Television Stations

Article source: http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/SF-Tech-Firms-Want-Retail-Real-Estate-To-Bear-Tax-Burden-149547085.html

Simon Launches Installation of Electric Vehicle Charging Stations

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 15:43:38 +0000

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- Customers Can Charge EVs While Shopping and Dining -

INDIANAPOLIS, April 5, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Simon Property Group, Inc. (NYSE: SPG), the country’s largest owner, developer and manager of high quality retail real estate and long a leader among developers in integrating energy conservation strategies into mall operations, announces another important initiative as it becomes one of the first retail developers to offer electric vehicle charging stations at its properties.

The initial installation has been completed at Simon’s Florida Mall in Orlando and will be complete at Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, CA later this month. One ‘Level 2′ charger, which has the capability to “top off” or partially charge a customer’s electric vehicle in a 60 to 120 minute time frame, is now operational near the food court entrance at Florida Mall. One dual unit, with two ‘Level 2′ chargers, will be installed in the parking deck between Macy‘s and Bloomingdale‘s at Stanford Shopping Center.

These EV charging stations will be self-service and easy to operate. Shoppers will be able to just “pull up and plug in” and leave their vehicles at the charging station while they are enjoying time at the mall. Charging will be free during an introductory time period and then a nominal fee will be assessed.

Production numbers from EV automakers project approximately a million EVs on U.S. roads by 2015, and possibly 27 million (or 10 percent of all vehicles in the U.S.) by 2020.

“We believe that a well-developed EV charging infrastructure is going to be key to the success of EVs,” said George Caraghiaur, Simon Property Group’s senior vice president of energy and procurement. “Meeting the needs of the first-to-market drivers of electric vehicles in the communities we serve is yet another example of our commitment to sustainability.”

Simon is working with two companies during this initial rollout. Car Charging, Inc. (OTCBB: CCGI), installed the unit at Florida Mall and 350Green will install the charging units at Stanford Shopping Center. Both companies are dedicated to expanding the EV charging station infrastructure nationally.

Michael D. Farkas, CEO of Car Charging Group, Inc., said “Our collaboration with Simon Property Group is a prime example of our national growth strategy. By partnering with premier national property management companies for installations, we are able to rapidly deploy a nationwide roll out of a robust network of convenient charging stations. We are happy to have brought this amenity to customers at Florida Mall and look forward to bringing it to additional Simon Property Group locations across the nation.”

“We are thrilled to be working with Simon on this project to place the first in what will be a larger network of our charging stations in the Bay Area,” said Mariana Gerzanych, 350Green’s founder and CEO. “The goal is to make EV charging convenient and accessible to anyone who owns an EV – regardless of whether or not they have a charging station at their home or office.”

About Car Charging Group, Inc.

Car Charging Group, Inc. is an owner and provider of EV charging stations with the mission to build-out a nationwide infrastructure, enabling EV and PHEV owners to charge their Electric Cars anytime, anywhere. As part of its strategy, the Company owns, provides, installs and maintains electric car charging stations and works with its landowner partners to identify appropriate locations for its charging stations. The Company provides convenient, safe and affordable charging stations away from home in customer-friendly public locations, including municipalities, shopping malls, parking garages, multi-family residential and commercial properties. Car Charging Group, Inc. is based in Miami, Florida. The Company’s website can be viewed at www.CarCharging.com.

About 350Green

350Green is a project developer that designs, builds and operates scalable networks of plug-in electric vehicle (EV) charging stations across the US. The company distributes its stations by partnering with retail hosts at select, high-traffic shopping centers and other places near where EV drivers live and work, to create an expansive and convenient network of EV charging locations. Current projects totaling several hundred chargers are underway in Chicago, the state of Pennsylvania, and the San Francisco Bay area. More information on 350Green and its projects can be found at its website: http://www.350green.com

About Simon Property Group

Simon Property Group, Inc. is an SP 500 company and the largest real estate company in the U.S. The Company currently owns or has an interest in 392 retail real estate properties comprising 263 million square feet of gross leasable area in North America, Europe and Asia. Simon Property Group is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana and employs more than 5,000 people worldwide. The Company’s common stock is publicly traded on the NYSE under the symbol SPG. For further information, visit the Simon Property Group website at www.simon.com.

SOURCE Simon Property Group, Inc.